How to choose a pharma Omnichannel consultant

A commercial excellence lead with an Omnichannel budget and a mandate from leadership usually receives proposals from four directions within a month. A global consulting firm offers a transformation program. The agency that produces the brand's content offers orchestration. The platform vendor offers its services arm. A former industry leader working independently offers a short diagnostic. Each proposal is credible on its own terms, and comparing them is difficult because they are answers to different questions.

This article sets out what each kind of provider is suited to, the questions that reveal fit, and the signs that a proposal will disappoint. It is written by an advisory firm, so it has an interest. The aim is to describe the choice fairly enough that a reader could use it to select someone else.

What kinds of pharma Omnichannel consultant are there?

Most companies use more than one of these at different stages. The mistake is to ask one kind of provider to do another's work. An agency asked to design governance will design it around content. A vendor asked whether a platform is needed will find that it is.

Which problem do you actually have?

Before comparing providers, it helps to state the problem in one sentence that a colleague outside the project would understand. Three versions come up repeatedly. The first is that the company has invested in Omnichannel and cannot show what it returned. The second is that a strategy exists and execution in the affiliates has stalled. The third is that teams lack the shared skills and ways of working to run coordinated engagement at all. Each calls for a different first engagement, and a provider who offers the same program for all three has not listened.

What questions should you ask?

• Who will do the work? Ask for the names and backgrounds of the people who will be in the workshops and write the deliverables. If they differ from the people in the pitch, ask why.
• Have they run Omnichannel inside a pharma company? Advice from people who have held the budget, managed the field force relationship and faced a Compliance review differs from advice assembled from other clients' projects.
• How do they involve Medical, Legal and Compliance? A provider who plans to consult these functions at the end has not delivered in pharma often. They should be in the first session.
• What will your team be able to do afterwards? A good engagement leaves methods, templates and skills with the client. Ask what is transferred and what remains proprietary.
• How will success be judged, and by whom? The measures should be agreed before the work starts and should describe a change in your business. A provider's own satisfaction survey is a weak substitute.
• What would make them advise you to stop? A provider with no answer has no decision points in the plan.

How should proposals be compared?

On four things, in this order. Fit to the stated problem, the seniority and continuity of the delivery team, what is transferred to your organization, and price. Price comes last because proposals of different shapes cannot be compared on cost until the first three are equal. A lower price for a junior team that needs your managers' time to steer is often the more expensive option.

References matter more than case studies. Case studies are written by the provider. A fifteen-minute call with a former client, with one question about what went wrong and how it was handled, is more informative than any slide.

What are the warning signs in a proposal?

• The platform comes first. A recommendation to buy or replace technology appears before anyone has examined how customers are engaged today.
• The team is introduced after signature. The proposal names roles and levels, and no people.
• The scope has no decision points. A long program is priced as a whole, with no stage at which you could stop or change direction on the evidence.
• Success is activity. The measures are workshops held, journeys drawn and people trained, with nothing that describes a change in engagement or outcome.
• Compliance is a workstream at the end. Review is planned after design, which is where pharma programs lose months.
• Everything is proprietary. Your team will depend on the provider to operate what was built.

When is a senior independent advisor the right choice?

When the constraint is judgment and experience and the work can be done by a small team. Typical cases are an impact measurement baseline, a persona and journey program for a brand or a region, an operating model for one function such as Medical Affairs, or a capability program that trains internal trainers. In these cases one experienced person who stays through delivery usually achieves more than a larger team, at lower cost and with less demand on the client's managers. Where a program needs scale, the same advisor often works alongside an agency or a larger firm as the pharma Omnichannel lead.

OD Pharma Consulting is a firm of this kind. Every engagement is led and delivered by the founder, a former Global Vice President at Viatris and senior leader at Pfizer. The how we work page describes how engagements start, and the case studies show the work anonymously.

Where should you begin?

Write the problem in one sentence, decide which kind of provider it calls for, and ask two or three of that kind for a first engagement that is bounded in time and scope and ends in a decision. A first engagement of eight to twelve weeks tells you more about a provider than any selection process, and it limits what a wrong choice can cost.